As the speech synthesis technology advances, a speech synthesizing device which can read aloud an electronic mail, for example, by synthesizing and outputting a voice corresponding to text has been developed.
The technology for reading aloud text is attracting attention as a technology fitting a universal design which enables elderly persons or visually-impaired persons, who have difficulty in recognizing characters visually to use of the electronic mail service, as others.
For example, a computer program which allows a PC (Personal Computer) capable of transmitting and receiving an electronic mail to realize read-aloud of text of a mail or read-aloud a Web document has been provided. Moreover, a mobile telephone, which has a small character display screen causing trouble in reading characters, is sometimes equipped with a mail read-aloud function.
Such a conventional text read-aloud technology basically includes a construction to convert text to a “reading” corresponding to the meaning thereof and read aloud the text.
However, in the case of Japanese, a character included in text is not limited to a hiragana character, a katakana character, a kanji character, an alphabetic character, a numeric character and a symbol, and a character string (so-called face mark) made up of a combination thereof is sometimes used to represent feelings. Even in the case of a language other than Japanese, a character string (so-called Emoticon, Smiley and the like) made up of a combination of characters, numeric characters and symbols is sometimes used to represent feelings. A special character referred to as a “pictographic character” may be included in text as well as a hiragana character, a katakana character, a kanji character, an alphabetic character, a numeric character and a symbol as a specific function of a mobile telephone especially in Japan, and the function is used frequently.
A user can convey his feelings to the other party through text by inserting a special character described above, such as a face mark, a pictographic character and a symbol, in his text.
In the meantime, a technology to be used for properly reading aloud text including a special character has been developed in the field of speech synthesis.
According to Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2001-337688, discloses a technology for reading aloud a character string in a prosody according to delight, anger, sorrow and pleasure, each of which is associated with the meaning of a detected character string or a detected special character, when a given character string included in text is detected.
Moreover, a technology which can prevent redundant read-aloud by deleting the character string and performing conversion to text data to be used for speech synthesis is discussed, when a character string coincident with a “reading” corresponding to the meaning set for a face mark or a symbol exists immediately before or immediately after a face mark or a symbol (see, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-184642).